Book News Abounds

Book news seems to be everywhere I look these days. Almost every magazine highlights some book. Publishers are constantly pouring out news about their books—at least this should be happening. It’s a challenge to sort through it some times—and determine which books to purchase and read—and which books just to read the reviews or the back cover. Each of us make these decisions day by day and overall they are a huge factor in which books sell and which books don’t sell.  As I’ve mentioned many times before in these entries, authors need to be proactive in helping this mystical buzz factor.  It takes pure hard work and a bit of good fortune along the way.

I’m not going to write much today but wanted to highlight a couple of recent reviews. This morning I turned in another batch of reviews for Faithful Reader.com (next month’s material) but today I wanted to make sure you saw my words about a couple of books in the July issue. First Allison Bottke, the God-Allows-U-Turns author, has written an excellent first novel called A Stitch In Time. Here’s where you can read my review. It’s a fun way to pass a few hours.

 A number of times in these entries I have mentioned the Left Behind books. I reviewed the latest addition to this series called The Rapture (follow the link). Today I learned the Left Behind series was one of the top selling series in Amazon’s Hall of Fame—since the online bookstore launched ten years ago.  Also here’s the link with the specific authors who got into this top area of volume sales at Amazon.

The Left Behind website includes a media alert about Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. They are scheduled to appear on Good Morning America on Thursday, July 27th. It was good to see both of these authors (mostly from a distance) at the recent trade show in Denver.  I did get to talk with Jerry Jenkins for a few minutes at the Christy Awards banquet.  It was fun to see this long-term friend.

My encouragement is for you to follow this book information as a writer—and if the book looks interesting read it and support the author’s efforts. Some day the role may be reversed and you will be out on the road telling people about your book.  I’m convinced as you give out the good will that it will come back to you.